


Science Fiction/Double Feature

by zuzeca



Category: Morbius: The Living Vampire, Venom (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Blood Drinking, Blow Jobs, Comic Book Science, Dark Comedy, Dorks in Love, First Time Bottoming, M/M, Minor Eddie Brock/Venom Symbiote, Other, Romantic Fluff, Science, Science Experiments, Shower Sex, Tentacle Dick, Tentacles, Threesome - M/M/Other, Timeline What Timeline, Vampire Sex, Wall Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-02 07:59:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18807004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zuzeca/pseuds/zuzeca
Summary: In which Dr. Michael Morbius continues his ongoing quest to cure his vampiric condition, deals with a home invasion, does some self reflection, and has sex with an alien.





	Science Fiction/Double Feature

**Author's Note:**

> So...apparently my inability to write an OT3 for symbrock was not in fact an inability. I just have very, very specific tastes. Inspired by the lovely art of [eabevella](https://eabevella.tumblr.com/tagged/morbius/) and the adorable meta and commentary that's been cropping up on tumblr, all of which hijacked my brain and sent me on a brief but extremely weird writing bender, and this was the result. So yay, first fic for the AO3 tag? Full warning, this is both my first time writing Morbius and one of the most extensive pieces for which I've written Venom specifically (as in the comic canon amalgamation of both Eddie and the symbiote), so I’m still feeling out their voices. This is also super non-compliant to any timeline. I legitimately couldn't tell you where this is supposed to fall, since Michael is still going full vampire, Nikos, Martine, and Anne are no more, and Venom has apparently hammered out some parts of their relationship? I just fell in love with the premise of these two dramatic fools meeting in this fashion. And while I didn’t specify, for maximum hilarity, please do picture Michael in the outfit he canonically purchased from a BDSM shop.
> 
> Also I tagged this “Comic Book Science” but there’s a bit of actual science which made it into this, including some implications of animal death and experimentation (non explicit) and some strange comedy which may only be funny if you’ve experienced that unique brand of suffering that comes with working in a research lab. As they say, PCR also stands for Pipette, Cry, Repeat. And I did some actual research on vampire bats for this, so there's a few features that I've included that are...probably less romantic than the average vampire. And yet the rest of this disaster is entirely romantic. I honestly couldn't help myself. Enter at your own risk.

If you asked Michael Morbius the most aggravating feature of his condition, after the compulsory blood drinking, the murderous instincts, the photophobia, and his new capacity for attracting superheroes who wanted to murder him for these aforementioned qualities, he would have to say it was the enhanced hearing.

Oh it sounded good in theory, the ability to hear the heart of a mouse beating from several meters away, the pitter of the tiny organ an incessant background hum.

It sounded good, until you were stuck listening to several hundred of them at the same time.

Connors’ old laboratory—now recently evicted of its former, scaly tenant—was not what one would call “modern”. It contained no fume hood, no clean bench, and had been piped for gas only in the sense that Connors had apparently at one point spliced in a line to the city gas connections, a rickety, corrugated thing which threatened to give way every time it was used. Bottles of flammable liquids were generously distributed across the benchtops—which appeared to have been ripped from a fast food restaurant, as they were an eyesmarting shade of yellow—and the closest thing to any sort of safety equipment was the fire extinguisher, tossed in a corner by a careless, clawed hand. There was no incubator, no sonicator, no centrifuge, and Michael had had to construct an autoclave from a pressure cooker stolen from a dumpster, as Connors was apparently above such petty matters as sterile technique.

In fact the only feature that stood in its favor was that it was underground, and thus avoided both the problems of sunlight and superheroes, who seemed drawn to ruining Michael’s experiments with the single-minded focus of a shark drawn to the thrashings of a dying fish.

Michael leaned over his Petri dish of cells, tucked in the shadow of the Bunsen burner—narrowly avoiding setting his hair alight—and tried very hard not to forget himself and breathe on them. He would have given several pounds of his flesh for a laminar flow hood. Carefully, he pipetted in the scant few microliters of his vector. Not daring to take his eyes off the dish, he put down his transfer pipet—the result of agonizing hours of drawing glass and burned fingers until he’d obtained one thin enough—and reached for the lid. He wrapped the dish loosely in Saran Wrap with the care of a wren assembling a nest, and placed it in a pickle jar. He lit his candle stub from the burner, added it to the jar, screwed on the lid, and watched.

The flame flickered for several minutes, then went out. Michael breathed a sigh of relief. He carried the jar over to a shelf, towards which a running space heater, daisy chained off two extension cords, was pointed. He set his cells in a warm spot and adjusted the wind-up alarm clock he’d also stolen from a dumpster to go off in fourteen hours.

This task complete, he noted the time in his lab notebook, and steeled himself to go look at the mice.

Not that there was anything _wrong_ with the mice, per se. True he’d had to house them in modified Tupperware and the pet store three blocks over was probably very confused by the regular burglaries of pellet food and bedding—and the carefully counted stacks of bills left on the counter each time—but at the end of the day, they were mice, no matter how painstakingly bred, and they did perfectly well in his sewer laboratory. No, the issue wasn’t the mice themselves.

It was the _noise_.

As an ordinary man, Michael had often found himself aggravated by incessant sounds, to the point where he’d found himself frequently using earplugs. A standard breeding room was already a symphony of scratching and and bedding thrown against cage walls, the occasional squeak and tussle as the mice worked out their tiny squabbles. Irritating perhaps, but bearable.

And then Michael had developed hearing on par with a bat, and every time he walked into a colony room was like he imagined a screaming stadium to be. All the dozens of ultrasonic squeaks which had been outside the range of his hearing, the rapids breaths and buzzing heartbeats, all plugged into an amplifier and blasted through his eardrums. This had resulted in him choosing to house the mice some ways distant from the main lab space, so he could at least _think_ in peace.

Yet he could still usually hear them upon his approach.

Which is how Michael knew, when he paused outside the distant, dead end pipe that served as the colony room, that something was very wrong.

He listened, cocking his head back and forth in a way that would have been blatantly unnecessary if only he’d retained that ancient ability of his scrabbling evolutionary predecessors to be able to swivel his ears. From within the depths of the pipe, he heard the faint scratch of living flesh against concrete, a click that sounded like the snap of Tupperware, a quiet squeak, abruptly silenced.

There was someone—or some _thing_ —in the room. With the mice. With _his_ mice. The mice Michael had spent painstaking months breeding and modifying to express the same vampire bat proteins which riddled his own wretched cells. The mice that represented miserable nights and sleepless days, hundreds of samples genotyped as he hadn’t needed to since he was a graduate student, hundreds of gels poured, dozens on dozens of litters lost and counted, rearing the fragile creatures with the feverish devotion of a mother with a sickly babe.

Michael bared his fangs and stormed into the pipe.

The place was not well lit of course; he’d had to choose between temperature and light and eventually landed upon embedding a length of PVC pipe in the ceiling, fixed with mirrors to form a crude skylight. It left the room cast in mottled shadows, but Michael’s eyes were keen. Upon entry, he immediately registered two things.

One, several of his Tupperware were empty, their lids askew like shucked seed pods.

Two, a monster, pitch dark and glistening, over two meters tall, with eyes like pools of titanium dioxide and teeth like _Idiacanthus_ , was currently standing over a newly opened container, with an expression not unlike that of one of Hell’s office workers with a packed lunch. In a meaty, clawed hand dangled one of Michael’s precious mice, that had taken him so, so, long to breed, that it lifted towards the open gape of its maw, from which uncoiled a tongue as long and thick as a python.

Michael didn’t recall making a decision, but he did remember screaming “I’ll kill you!”, and throwing himself upon the creature. There was a cascade of Tupperware and an infrabass bellow of shock. Michael grabbed for the mouse, which immediately bit him, and received a startled punch that nearly flattened what was left of his nose. And most of his face. Snarling, he clawed at the creature, felt his nails rake slimy flesh. The monster hissed in rage as they grappled, its limbs seeming to unravel around him. Coiling mass enveloped his arms, snapping them to his sides. He kicked at the creature, felt his legs adhere like he was kicking a figure made of tar.

 **_“What is your problem?”_ ** spat the creature. **_“Are you rabid? Get lost or we’ll eat you as well!”_ **

“Those are my mice, you son of a bitch!” howled Michael. “Do you know long it took to breed this strain? I’m going to tear your tongue out and shove it up your—!”

The creature roared so loudly that if it had not been for the coils of its body holding him up, Michael would have ended up on his knees. He shrieked in agony, clawing in desperation, to injure, to cover his ears, to something, screaming for it to stop.

The sound, abruptly, cut off, and Michael sagged against the tentacles, which tightened to hold him in place. His head rang with the echoes, and he was dimly aware that he was gasping. He wanted to vomit, but he was empty, aching with hunger. The red rage was draining away, replaced by the crushing depression of reality.

It was ruined. Everything was ruined. His colony was in shambles, his assay ticking towards completion. He had nowhere sufficiently cold to freeze his cells, no way to wait for another batch of mice while his vector ate its way through his dish of cells, transforming everything it touched.

He’d been so close.

Tentative, firm weight against his shoulder: the monster’s hand. He stared dully at it, and wondered if he should give up and ask it to kill him.

The grip tightened and the monster looked at him shrewdly. Those blank, white eyes were unreadable.

**_“Are you alright now?”_ **

No, Michael wanted to scream. I’m not alright. I’ve not been alright since the day I got the diagnosis, since the day I tasted Martine’s blood, felt the life drain from her body, and I don’t think I will ever be alright again.

He stared at the monster and said nothing.

The monster set its mouth, teeth momentarily aligning, and looked around the shambles of the room. **_“Why were you keeping mice in the sewer?”_ **

“It doesn’t matter.”

**_“It—”_ **

“I said it doesn’t matter!”

The monster’s lip curled. Then, to Michael’s surprise, he felt himself lifted, brought close. The monster set him on his feet, then rested its other hand against the back of his skull. Michael eyed the thick forearm presented and considered if he could reach to bite it.

 **_“We are sorry,”_ ** said the monster. **_“We did not know that the mice were yours, that they were important. We were hungry and...work has been scarce, but that is no excuse. If we release you, we can help you clean up. Is that acceptable?”_ **

Michael blinked. “Clean up?” 

The monster released his shoulder and gestured around them. Michael closed his eyes briefly in weariness. Fourteen hours. Maybe some of the needed mice remained? Maybe all was not lost? 

“Alright,” he said.

The tentacles slowly released him and he locked his legs to stay upright. The monster offered a hand.

 **_“We are Venom,”_ ** they said. **_“And you?”_ **

“Mi—Morbius,” said Michael. “My name is Morbius.”

**_“Pleasure to meet you, Morbius. Tell us how we can help.”_ **

Cleaning with Venom was easily the most surreal experience of Michael’s life, which all things considered, was saying something. Despite their fearsome appearance, they took direction readily and handled both objects and living creatures with surprising delicacy. They even managed to use a delicate net of tendrils to recapture the wayward mouse from where it had fled to huddle amid some debris in the back of the pipe. They brushed dirt from white fur, and offered the tiny creature back to Michael.

The mouse didn’t even bother biting them.

 **_“Will you tell us why you are keeping mice in the sewers?”_ ** Venom said, after they had righted the remaining Tupperware and Michael had performed individual checks on each one. He hoped the disruption of the new litters wasn’t going to result in any maternal cannibalism. Venom used their tentacles to gently sweep the spilled bedding into the debris pile at the back.

Michael hesitated. “I’m...I’m sick,” he said finally. “I’m working on a cure.”

**_“We have been sick before. We can smell something strange about you. Like blood and old, stale air.”_ **

Michael hunched. “I…”

Venom must have noticed his stricken expression, because they hastily said. **_“It is not a bad smell. We have lived in the sewers too. We have smelled much worse.”_ **

Michael eyed them, but decided to take the comment in the spirit it was likely meant. He was tired and so _hungry_.

“I am—or I was, human, once. I was dying, and I tried to fix it, but something went wrong. Now I have...symptoms. I can’t eat food anymore, just blood.”

Venom cocked their head in intrigue. **_“A vampire?”_ **

Michael winced. “I suppose. Nothing like what you’ve heard, I’m sure, but something similar. The other symptoms are...manageable, but the hunger…”

Venom nodded. **_“We sympathize. It is difficult to combat. We help each other with our own, thankfully.”_ **

“You?”

“ _ **P** **henylethylamine**_ ,” they said. **_“We have found alternative sources, but there was an unfortunate stint of brain eating some time ago.”_ **

Michael boggled slightly at their matter of fact tone. “And now?”

Venom smiled, exposing horrifying rows of teeth and making Michael wonder, just for a moment, if _he_ also looked like that. **_“Chocolate. And, well, other things.”_ **

“You keep saying we?”

To his surprise, part of the monstrous face peeled back, bloodlessly exposing a square jaw, a few wisps of yellow hair, and one blue eye, as bright and direct as Martine’s had been. Michael felt something painful turn over in his chest. **_“One part of us is human, the other not. Together we are Venom.”_ ** Human musculature and alien flesh worked as one, a smile of sharp teeth and pink skin. **_“Bonded as one.”_ **

“You’re symbiotes,” murmured Michael.

**_“Indeed.”_ **

“That’s...that’s good. Good you help each other. Good not to be alone.”

Venom regarded him. **_“But you, you are alone.”_ **

Michael rested a palm one of the Tupperware, felt the tremors of the mice scratching away within. “I generally prefer it but, I wasn’t always.” He swallowed hard, felt nausea war with the ache of the hunger. “I had a fiancé once. She died. I didn’t...I didn’t kill her directly, not entirely, but I was responsible.”

 **_“Ah.”_ ** Venom let out a whoosh of air from their mouth in a sigh, carrying the faint scent of carrion and toxic chemicals. **_“We made a similar error. She—”_ ** The mix of flesh wobbled as if destabilizing. **_“We frightened her, did not listen. She…”_ **

Michael’s hand curled, claws pricking at his palm. “I’m sure you did not drink the blood from her dying body,” he said hollowly.

 **_“No, but we were directly responsible for her death.”_ ** Venom studied him. **_“That must have been awful.”_ **

Michael opened his mouth, closed it. The words spilled out, sharp edged, cutting his mouth. “I live in fear of losing control, of hurting another innocent. It _aches_ , the constant hunger, knowing I’m only a droplet of spilled blood away from giving in, from being a monster.”

**_“Do you have anything which can help?”_ **

“Cold blood,” said Michael wearily. “In the fridge. It doesn’t make it go away but...it helps.”

**_“Does warm blood, living blood, help more?”_ **

God help him, even the words were enough to send a hitch of excitement through him. He clenched his jaw, trying to ground himself, felt fang slide on fang, sharpening each other. Drool pooled in his mouth and he swallowed it frantically. “I can’t—”

Venom stepped closer and the hairs on Michael’s neck rose. **_“We took from you. We would make amends. We have blood, human blood. Would you like some?”_ **

Michael shook his head in frantic denial, nearly tripping as he took a step back.“I can’t, I can’t I’ll lose control, I’ll hurt, I’ll kill—”

 **_“Hush,”_ ** Venom murmured. They stepped closer, rested a huge hand on Michael’s shoulder. Michael flinched, wondered if he should bolt. **_“You are strong, but so are we. We can restrain you, if it becomes too much.”_ **

“You don’t know that!”

 **_“We know our strength,”_ ** said Venom, unconcerned. **_“The question is, do you want this? Will you trust us to help you?”_ **

A high, miserable sound escaped Michael. “You can’t, you can’t ask me whether I want, you _can’t!_ ”

 **_“Then can you trust us?”_ ** With surprising gentleness, Venom pulled him closer. Tentacles wound around Michael’s limbs once more, immobilizing them. **_“See? We have you. You cannot easily break free.”_ ** The tentacles knotted them together and dark flesh shifted, exposing part of a pink and human throat that drew Michael’s horrified gaze like a guided missile. One clawed hand rose and tenderly wiped the line of saliva that had overspilled Michael’s mouth. **_“This is an offer, Morbius. We have no intention of dying from it.”_ **

“Michael,” Michael blurted. He was shaking like a leaf and could no longer control his constant salivating. His clothes felt tight, too warm, uncomfortable, and he couldn’t look away from that patch of flesh. He could _smell_ the blood, riding below the surface, hear the beat of a human heart, and he couldn’t stop the whine which escaped him. “My name is Michael. Please…”

 **_“Michael,”_ ** said Venom gently, arms enfolding him, bringing him close to that warm flesh but god help him all of Venom was warm, warm like a good spot to sleep, strangely soft and slick without wetness. **_“Like the archangel. We have you, Michael. It is safe to feed.”_ **

The slice of flesh, the spill of hot blood on his tongue was like an electric shock. Distantly, he felt his body jerk as if in a convulsion. He burrowed blind, lapping, drinking. His brain felt wrapped in clouds and god it had been so _long_ since he’d tasted warm blood, living blood, hot and oxygenated and alive with the unique bouquet of an individual. He was dimly aware he was whimpering and Venom was purring in response, subsonic rumbles that buzzed soothingly against Michael’s chest, every point at which they touched. Venom was stroking his hair fondly, supporting him as he sucked, and there was so _much_ . A glut after famine and he couldn’t stop, was sure he could never stop, was full but he wanted _more_. His body slipped beyond his control and he wanted to cry out in panic, but then thick fingers dug firmly in his hair, pulled him inexorably away as he writhed for it.

**_“Hush, breathe. You’re alright. We’ll take care of the blood scent in a moment.”_ **

He hung in Venom’s grip as before his eyes, the human flesh healed and recovered itself with with alien tissue. To his shock, he found himself embraced, pinned tightly to that huge body as he breathed through the slowly dissipating smell of blood. He was shivering uncontrollably.

 **_“Michael,”_ ** said Venom, with an affectionate edge to the tone that made Michael, scraped raw and open, like an exposed nerve, want to fly apart. **_“See? All was well. You did not harm us.”_ **

“My teeth…”

 **_“Are far too sharp to cause any pain.”_ ** Venom touched Michael’s chin, probed gently with one thick finger behind thin lips, traced the grooves in the fangs. **_“You are a marvel, Michael. And besides, we know something of teeth.”_ **

Weary with the aftermath of terror and a kind of unspeakable relief, Michael sagged against them. “I don’t—I don’t know what to say.”

 **_“Then say nothing.”_ ** Venom nosed their strange, blunt face against Michael’s hair, the tip of their tongue flicking out to probe the unnatural point of one ear. **_“But do you perhaps have a place to wash?”_ ** They pressed a gentle hand against the front of Michael’s now-wet trousers. **_“We would help you.”_ **

Shame flooded Michael’s mouth, hot and bitter. He knew, in the core of him, that it was a natural response, maybe the most natural thing about him, an autonomic reflex to volumes of liquid that no human was intended to intake. It was required even, to concentrate the blood into something which could nourish. Bats did it, mosquitoes did it, but Michael had thus far avoided it except at his worst moments, when he lost control and gorged. “Please don’t.” 

 **_“There’s no need for shame,”_ ** Venom assured him. **_“And we’ve lived in the sewers for quite some time. We’d say this smell is more of a feature than an oddity.”_ ** Their tone was strangely wry.

Michael couldn’t stop the bark of startled laughter which escaped him. Venom grinned at him, a nightmare expression, pale eyes slitting with amusement.

He let Venom take him to the dark, crude nest of pipes that served as both douse shower and washroom. Venom helped him peel off his urine soaked clothes, rinse them in the cold water, wring them out. It was unnerving to be nude around them, but Venom appeared uncaring of anything resembling modesty and Michael finally gave up and showered. There wasn’t much in the way of warm water, but he soaped himself down, found himself settled by the programmed activity of grooming. Venom lingered and watched him as he squeezed the water from his hair.

“Do you want to wash?”

**_“Maybe if we can join you.”_ **

Michael shivered violently. “I...no one has asked. Not since...”

 **_“We are asking.”_ ** Those pale eyes regarded him. **_“It felt good to hold you, Michael. Good to feed you. We think…”_ ** They went quiet, almost as if conferring. **_“We would like to touch you.”_ **

Michael swallowed, his stomach turning with nervousness. He felt stripped in more ways than one, a kind of madness that made him _want._ “I...if you want, I think I would like that.”

Venom’s eyes brightened. They came under the fall of water, laid hands on him that were blood warm. **_“You’ll have to let us know what you like. We’ve never been with one like you.”_ **

“What, a monster?”

**_“A man.”_ **

 Michael clapped a hand over his mouth to stop the sound that wanted to escape. Venom coaxed it aside, licked the sensitive palm and god their tongue was so soft, gently textured and slick. They licked at Michael’s hand, then withdrew the appendage into their mouth. Teeth vanished, and they leaned forward in an unmistakable gesture.

“Wait,” Michael blurted, and they paused. “You don’t...don’t you want to kiss with your tongue out, your teeth?”

Venom looked puzzled. **_“It’s generally not something people have preferred?”_ **

“I prefer,” said Michael firmly. “You saw...you saw me as I am. Hungry and uncontrollable and shameful even. I wouldn’t offer any less.”

Venom considered this. Flesh peeled back, exposing rows of teeth, and their tongue uncoiled. Greatly daring, Michael reached up and grasped the tip. They tensed, but he merely brought it to his face, and kissed it, as he might have kissed Martine’s hand.

Venom’s eyes brightened, and they growled and pulled him close.

Time seemed to dilate as they moved together, warm and feverish and strange. Michael found himself sucking desperately on their tongue, an act that produced delightful subsonic sounds from their throat. He found he could get hard, something he’d been too terrified and miserable and depressed to try, and he learned the strange, delightful reversal of having someone between his legs, of rubbing gently against slick flesh. He didn’t remember begging, but he remembered with crystal clarity the moment Venom hiked him up against the wall with unnatural strength and flexibility, bent, and coiled their tongue around him.

Michael had been sucked before, enjoyed it very much, but this act blew all thought out of his head. He cried out and clutched at them, thoughts reduced and narrowed to that slick and dexterous grip.

 **_“Incredible,”_ ** Venom rumbled, producing delightful vibrations that nearly tipped Michael over the edge. **_“Can you come for us?”_ **

Michael didn’t think, insofar as he could think at all, that he could keep _from_ coming. He clung and thrust up into the shifting coil of their tongue and they purred with satisfaction as he began to spill.

He hung in their grip, mind buzzing as they licked him clean.

 ** _"Different,”_ ** they said at last, when they were done and he was slick and sensitive, **_“but delicious.”_ **

 He groped for them, tried to get them nearer, and when they obliged he kissed their face, their mouth, the slick surfaces of teeth and tongue. Their fangs clacked against each other, but the sensation, for all its oddity, didn’t make Michael flinch. “And you,” he panted, dizzy with want, with _elation,_ “What do you want?”

They cocked their head, thinking, then touched beneath his hip, probing into the space behind his genitals. **_“To be in you, we think. Is that alright?”_ **

 Michael had practically no notion of what this might entail, but he nodded. He felt warm and active from his meal, relaxed and open from his orgasm, and he squeezed his legs tight around them. “Yes, yes that’s alright. You won’t hurt me.” And even if they did, he would heal. He gripped at the slablike muscles of their arms and tried to kiss them again.

 Venom chuckled. **_“No, we think not.”_ ** They nuzzled at the base of his throat and Michael felt something slick and mobile probe between his legs.

 Michael was the first to admit that his sex life had stuck rather firmly on the side of ordinary, if no less enjoyable for its conventional nature. Martine had been loving and enthusiastic, and he would have felt no twinge of regret to have laid down beside her every night for the rest of his life. But he was badly unprepared for the acuity of sensation that came with being penetrated. Venom grunted softly as they seated themselves, and while Michael couldn’t exactly see _what_ they had used to enter him, the strange stretch was indeed painless, if a bit uncomfortable. He squirmed on the intrusion and Venom’s claws pricked at his skin. They withdrew and thrust, in a manner that Michael recognized well, testing a familiar motion in an unfamiliar environment. They shifted him in their grip and a watery jolt of pleasure crawled up his spine.

“There,” he gasped, struggling to press into the movement. “Right there.”

 Venom hummed with intrigue and obeyed. **_“That feels good?”_ **

Michael nodded feverishly. The sensation was definitely different, but intense, pushing back against his body’s shift towards refraction. He clenched down, testing the motion, and was gratified to feel Venom jolt inside him. He was getting hard again and he pulled, demanding, trying to to find an angle at which he could rub himself against slick flesh.

Venom might as well have been a stone wall, for all they could be moved, but one of those black tentacles uncoiled from his body and wrapped boneless around Michael’s erection. They squeezed gently and Michael jerked up into their grip.

 “Can you come in me?”

 Venom’s eyes dilated. **_“Eddie can. And we can share it.”_ **

 “Do it.”

 Venom bared their teeth and bottomed out, molding Michael against their body. Again they brought him to the crook of their neck and Michael licked and sucked, nearly instinctual, at alien flesh.

 ** _"He liked it, when you bit us.”_ ** Venom thrust again and Michael found soft, human skin, smelling of sweat and musk, pressed against lip and fang. **_“Will you do it again?”_ **

 Michael had never bitten anyone when he was so full, and while his first instinct was to refuse, the edge of longing in Venom’s tone caught him. He hesitated, fearful of being overwhelmed, but at last sank in his fangs, felt warm blood flush on his tongue. Venom sighed with pleasure and held him tighter.

As he drank, he became gradually aware that while the fog of warmth that enveloped his brain while feeding was very much present...there was no edge of desperation to it, no overwhelming need. He felt relaxed and full, lapping carefully, guiding the delicate trickle along the groove that bisected his tongue. To his wonder, he found he could withdraw at will, no screaming instinct driving him to drink and drink and never stop. On a whim, he changed the angle and bit down again, a gripping bite, mimicking the copulatory hold of a big cat, strong enough to be felt despite the sharpness of his teeth.

 Venom’s thrusts stuttered and Morbius bit harder, elated to feel them start to come, his own body straining to meet them. Michael withdrew and licked gently at the sluggishly bleeding wound, coaxing them through it as they gasped.

 He felt human flesh heal beneath his tongue, and looked up in time to see Venom’s fanged maw withdraw like a dark cowl, revealing light, sandy hair and bright blue eyes. The man within was handsome, not unusually so, but enough to make Michael suddenly aware of his own, shabby features. He swallowed and did his best to make introductions, though he doubted there were any protocols for how to introduce oneself to someone once they were already inside you. “You must be Eddie.”

 The man laughed, just a little breathless, and Venom’s arms squeezed tight around him. “The very same. A bit strange to be exchanging names this late in the game, but it’s a pleasure to meet you.” He smiled and pressed a small kiss to the corner of Michael’s mouth, just above where the bump of his fang could be felt through his lip. He eased out of Michael, still half a tangle of dark flesh, and helped lower him to the floor. He reached behind Michael and shut off the water. “How do you feel?”

 The mundanity of the question caught Michael flat footed. How did he feel? Good, for one. Warm and full, no distraction of looming hunger. Relaxed, his body awash with endorphins. Clean and calm and strangely content, as he couldn’t remember feeling in...far too long.

“I—” The words caught in his throat, aching. “I feel...good. The hunger...it is better. Thank you.”

 Eddie reached out and carded through Michael’s hair with Venom’s fingers, those blue eyes warm in a way that made Michael want to run. “You’re a good man, Michael. You don’t deserve to be shackled by sickness, and if we helped you manage it in some small way, we’re glad of it.”

It was a foolish, vulnerable impulse, but Michael couldn’t hold it back. “Would you...like to lie down with me for a bit?”

Eddie paused, and Michael ached with the awareness that a tumble, even an enthusiastic one, was many parsecs away from asking someone into your bed and your space. It should have felt a violation, he’d always valued his privacy above all, but he wanted it, remembered warm skin and human scent in sheets, wanted something of that again, no matter from how strange a bedfellows.

“Of course,” said Eddie, and Venom’s hand took his own.

The mattress was an old one, springs squeaky and askew, the sheets threadbare and the comforter pilled. But Eddie settled into it with the unconcerned air of a housecat nesting down for the night. Michael crawled in awkwardly beside him, trying to gauge whether he should actually offer to cuddle.

The decision was thankfully taken out of his hands when Eddie spooned up behind him, thick arms hitching around his ribs. He murmured something Michael didn’t quite catch, and then a dark, fanged head, no bigger than that of a serpent, breached from his bicep and draped itself across Michael’s chest. Marveling, Michael reached to offer his hand, and they butted against it affectionately, licked at his fingers.

 Eddie pressed a kiss against Michael’s damp hair. “Do you sleep?”

 “Sometimes.”

 “I do, but my other doesn’t. You’ll have company either way.”

 A lump formed in Michael’s throat. “I see.” He hesitated, then offered a kiss of his own to the black shape on his chest, against the bare arch of the small head. “Thank you.”

 The other wriggled, fanged mouth stretching in a grin. **_“We like you,”_ ** they whispered, in a voice like dry leaves without the booming apparatus of Venom’s throat.

  _I like you too,_ thought Michael, and hugged Eddie’s arms tight to his ribs.

 Michael awoke to an empty bed, and not even an ache between his legs to remind him they had ever been there.

In his way, he tried to push it aside. There were still a few hours left on the assay, and he worked to salvage the last scraps of the experiment. Selected his mice, injected the cells. He might yet get some usable data.

He didn’t want to go back to bed, but where else could he go? True he could walk the streets after dark, but it was too warm for winter gear and he was more than recognizable. He tucked himself down among the blankets and tried to rest, wondered if he could hibernate, slow his metabolism so that the meal he’d taken from them might last a little longer.

He came out of the bleary fog of old memories and new nightmares to find warmth and weight over him, tender claws in his hair.

 **_“We needed to eat,”_ ** Venom murmured in his ear. **_“Come, we can share.”_ **

 “I don’t need to,” said Michael. The hunger was still manageable, merely a glimmer in the back of his mind.

  ** _"_** ** _And do men only eat when they are starving?”_ ** Venom nuzzled against him. **_“Drink a little, Michael, and you can sleep.”_ **

 It was strange in the extreme, the sensation of taking blood while relaxed and sleepy. He drank only a few mouthfuls before he felt the hunger ease and pulled himself away. Venom stroked his hair and kissed him, all fangs and tongue.

 ** _"You taste good like this, with our blood in you.”_ ** They tucked themselves into the angles and edges of his body, and Michael found himself relaxing under their weight, like a stabilizing blanket of gravesoil, implacable. **_“May we stay the night?”_ **

 Michael’s throat tightened. “Of course you can, you fool. I wouldn’t have invited into my bed, pitiful as it is, otherwise.” He sought their hand and found his own enveloped.

 As they laid together, quiet in the dark, Michael allowed his mind to drift. He had long learned against allowing himself to hope or wish for anything, as the world seemed determined to take it from him. But he allowed himself this moment, a moment of humanity between beings who were anything but. Perhaps there was solace to be found between monsters, or perhaps his understanding of monsterhood had shifted. Maybe there was a place to be found in the space between cure and illness.

 Regardless, to pass the time, he began mentally going over the checklist of reagents, which he would need for phenylethylamine synthesis.


End file.
